After two and a half years on the job, Philadelphia’s first chief technology officer will return to the private sector come 2011; a server problem knocks out New Jersey’s state portal.

Allan Frank, Philadelphia’s first chief technology officer, plans to leave the post and will continue his career in the private sector, Mayor Michael Nutter’s office announced prior to the Thanksgiving holiday.

Nutter hired Frank to the position in 2008. His last day will be Feb. 1, 2011, according to the IT-focused news website Technically Philly.

In an interview with Government Technology last year, Frank said he wanted to invest $100 million over five years on new technology for the city, to create what he called “Digital Philadelphia.”

“When I look up Broad Street and think of all our issues, I see them as interconnected,” he said at the time. “I find that profoundly exciting because our information technology ecosystem is in the fabric of everything. And if you start to pool together all the assets of the region, you can start to see the dream of Digital Philadelphia.”

Frank was a leading supporter of a strategy to consolidate the IT operations of 33 city agencies into the Division of Technology.

According to a statement from Nutter’s office, Frank has agreed to serve in an advisory role for the city, as chair of the Mayor’s Advisory Board on Technology.

“Allan has played a vital role in restructuring the city’s IT assets, which in turn will enable the city to reform, streamline and lower the costs of its activities for the benefit of all city residents,” Nutter said in a statement. “Allan has been an outstanding public servant who brought a wealth of insight from the private sector. I’m very pleased that he’s agreed to serve as chair of our new advisory board.”

New Jersey’s state government Web portal, www.state.nj.us, suffered a daylong outage Monday, Nov. 29. The downtime was caused by a server problem, according to a spokesperson. Some Web pages affiliated with the state remained online.